[svandamme]

Held my grandfathers hand when he was dying.
He had a massive stroke 3 days before, had never woken up, was breathing on his own
but was struggeling more and more..
Doc said he'de never come out of it, and during the night his breating was becoming more labored.. nurse came, and said he had a high fever.. and said he'de adminsiter something for that...
I questioned at that time if that would be prolonging his struggle.. But either way, within 15 minutes he went.. and i can only describe it as a candle that was burning out quietly.


To me, the human body is a system of biological processes.
All things need to work together to sustain life.

If certain parts stop working, or work less well , quality of life will decrease..
If it get's bad enough, the entire system will stop and life will end.

Now, like a mechanical system , there are many ways.

For instance trauma, is like somebody sticking a breaker bar in the cogs of a big machine.
It will come to a screeching halt.

Or a built in manufacturing defect : One of the main drive shafts of the big machine breaks prematurely... can't be replaced while it's running, and the machine stops

Or perhaps the machine is just so old, that all the replaceable parts have been replaced, and it's just been running slower, and slower, and slower till at some point it quietly stops running..


The only difference with mechanical machines, is that our machine can't be stopped.
We can replace or fix some parts on the fly, but we can't replace the Motronic box, we can't do a full frame restoration ... Once it fully stops , that's it.

i acknowledge that the ticker can be stopped and jump started, and that the brain can survive a short while with cooling and whatnot.. but essentially , we can't bring anybody back from actual death.

I think death is not the problem.. it's the dying part that is.
The longer that part lasts, the worse.

Quality of life, having the best time you can
And a quick death is really what anybody should really hope for.

What good is it to become 100 years old, if 30 years of it is spent being miserable?
I'll take an active life till and a massive stroke at 70 over really old age and a slow demise.